


Hell Is A Roller Rink

by graywrites



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Hopeful Ending, but i got to WRITE BITCH, its short as fuck too, this is dumb lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 02:55:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13894746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graywrites/pseuds/graywrites
Summary: Summer's burnout end brings the three worst girls since Eve back down to Earth on the long bus ride home, as if that changes anything, or as if that means that maybe they're just normal now. Or maybe they're just waiting everything out, the devil and late homework included.





	Hell Is A Roller Rink

**Author's Note:**

> hm this is dumb & i never see people in this fandom but its a lil drabble i had on my mind & wanted to see if theres anyone else who loves this game like i do. its mostly neptune centric but yk. im not in love w it and it's pretty short but you know.

Neptune never liked the summer anyways, air too close and gripping at her shoulders, even isolation left breathing down her neck like she’d done something wrong, like she had something to apologize for, which was only in part why Neptune avoided sincerity like she could kick and scream it away, like she couldn’t wait until the world stopped smoldering and every demon retreated into their respective corners, or like school starting again meant anything but repetition and a toothache. 

Neptune, who was born in July, couldn’t win. 

Neptune, who was born in a summer storm, and had never stopped thrashing or drowning ever since: she sat on one of the torn grey seats, far in the back, letting every little midwestern pothole carry her home, and spoke of internet connection and humidity on her hair and her own bed like the only reason she missed driver’s training was because of summer camp, like it had nothing to do with what she’d done or failed to do, voice ringing in her own ear against the shaking glass panels, and once it was warped enough in an echochamber, she could almost pretend she was just a teenager and nothing more. 

Air came to a boil and begun to rise around them, coming out in wisps through their teeth, and Neptune turned away and dreamed of winter, when she could crack her window in the corner and cold air would pool to the bottom like a flood around her ankles, always wading water. 

Briefly, Neptune thought of everyone who’d ever made her curl her fists, and thought, then, of returning to all of them, and of the system shock that might overtake her upon stepping in to school, so cold and full of distance her body may have forgotten how to behave there after months of bugspray swallowing her whole.

Muscle memory means nothing. 

Neptune clears her throat. 

Jupiter, then, speaks, or thinks about it. The bus is impossibly long and impossibly slow, and has been since before they saw it, before they were led out to it with all of their bags and old wounds. They have been on it for what might be an hour and what might be more, and possibly, they will never get off it, and maybe they will die on the back of the bus like dying in the roller rink or dying in detention, or they will see rows of grey seats even in their dreams- grey seats replacing crystals and radios and the devil, their nightmares of only what will bring or should have brought them home. 

The three of them could be the only ones on the bus, may as well be, but they aren’t, and quite possibly, the rest of the world could be watching them in a fish eye lense, but at least none of that is true, and at least they can see, from where they sit, the other groups, and the back of the head of the man who is taking them home. 

Jupiter speaks: “It’s only a couple of more years, right?” She says it like a question, Neptune wants to punch her, wants to kiss her, and her and Venus both know what she means. 

Venus shifts uncomfortably, then nods, eyes speaking of doubt, nothing more. “I guess you’re right.”

Neptune’s face is blank, she nearly coughs- “fine. Okay. It’s only a couple years.” Venus and Jupiter can not tell if she’s mocking them, or if she just doesn’t know how to say anything without it being a fight. 

“And then we can be anywhere. It’s not like it’s jail.”

Yes it is, Neptune almost says, but doesn’t, for their sake as much as her own. Is the devil a life sentence? Is the midwest? 

Is there even a difference?

“Other places….” Venus tries, “are like a different world, really?” Like there’s a thousand layers of humid air and at least fifteen years between here and everywhere else. 

Neptune doesn’t know how to tell them that packing up and moving does not purge them of sin any better than it purges them of the past they carry with them, does not know how to tell them that the future doesn’t exist outside of a vacuum, but she’s always gotten hives having to do anything for longer than a few minutes, so the only thing that keeps her from wanting to die is the only thing that keeps her mouth shut, just this once, because Neptune, too, has spent most of her life with her back on the floor and her head in visions of running away from anything that’s been at her heels for too long, objectively. 

So, instead, she let’s them speak of escape, which is always in the back of her mind, anyways.

Group south is five rows ahead of them, and in boring revelation, Neptune understands that she does not hate them, and equally understands why, because she knows just as well that they were all Summer Scouts, too, and they were Summer Scouts for a reason, and that is something they will carry with them, same as her, even if they all look exactly the same. 

Someone up far ahead begins playing a shitty song that is ten years old or more off of a shitty, smuggled MP3 player that is eight years old or more, and, as if it was just a field trip, or as if it was Before, the bus begins to sing along as loud as their lungs will allow, like it’s all they can do, or like if they’ll stop, they’ll just begin to cry, so instead, they scream along to lyrics they don’t know out of nothing, clapping off beat. 

The bus driver says nothing.

Shitty 2000’s music is repentance, and for five minutes, they’re children, they’re just kids, they have chem. lab first period two weeks from now, and what’s your fourth hour, can I see your schedule?

Neptune, Jupiter, and Venus are separated by three school districts and miles that are walkable, if you’re dedicated. Neptune etches the words of an eighties movie on the back of the seat in front of her, wonders if she’ll ever see any of them again, and even when the bus comes to dull stops and, one by one, opens the doors with the smell of hot oil and summer sycamores, letting each of them off inside their own city limits like going home was always the plan, or like that was any easier than not being home- even after the kid with the MP3 player disappears through metal doors to a past and future Neptune doesn’t know or care about, Neptune’s lips still mime dynamically in silent prayer along to the beat of a drum.

**Author's Note:**

> ah i hope u like it & u should leave a long ass review for no reason other than like. im bored bitch! if u wanna send me a fic rq or talk to me abt wktd hmu @ kryptomb.tumblr.com/ask


End file.
